The ad tech industry is experiencing a transformative shift. Media entities are navigating a challenging landscape characterized by declining profits and the continuing phaseout of third-party cookies. In these times, self-serve platforms are emerging as a compelling solution, offering significant benefits to both the buy-side and sell-side markets.

However, despite many advantages,  there are still a limited number of self-serve platforms available today and even fewer that provide complete independence from vendor support teams.

Navigating Profit Loss and Cookie Phaseout: A Publisher’s Path Forward

One primary reason publishers seek to regain control within their ad tech stack is the need to address declining profits. The traditional programmatic advertising model, which relies heavily on third-party cookies, is becoming unsustainable. Brand publishers are increasingly returning to direct campaigns, which often necessitates expanding their sales teams — overhead smaller publishers can’t afford.

Signal loss also pushes publishers to explore alternative revenue streams and monetization models. In this landscape, working with multiple intermediaries and not having a clear view of how the publisher’s data is collected and processed becomes especially unsustainable.

Taking Back Control: How Self-Serve Platforms Empower Publishers

Self-serve platforms offer a viable solution by not only enabling publishers to leverage their first-party data more effectively but also tools and capabilities to manage advertising campaigns in a privacy-compliant manner.

Operational efficiency is another critical factor in the success of any advertising campaign. Self-serve platforms streamline the ad buying and selling process, reducing the time and resources required to manage campaigns. Publishers can quickly set up, monitor, and adjust their Prebid configuration in real-time, leading to more effective and timely optimizations.

Fully automated publisher systems handle everything from inventory management to bid optimization to A/B testing, freeing up valuable time and resources.

Breaking Barriers: Self-Serve Solutions for Smaller Publishers

The ad tech industry is characterized by high entry barriers, particularly for smaller media entities. Top SSPs often have stringent minimum requirements not just in terms of traffic volume and geolocation, but also brand safety commitment and privacy integration, forcing smaller and regional publishers to work through agencies.

That’s what makes self-serve platforms so appealing. Publishers can often get around the minimum requirements and obtain direct SSPs while simultaneously working with resellers’ accounts. This allows them to manage both until they secure their own direct accounts.

Smaller media entities can leverage self-serve platforms to manage their ad campaigns independently and plug in their direct SSP accounts without the need for agency intermediaries, something that previously was only accessible to media with their own in-house Prebid.

The pay-as-you-go model, which many self-serve platforms operate on, benefits Tier 2 and Tier 3 publishers by offering a flexible, cost-effective solution that aligns with their often unpredictable traffic levels. A monthly fee often comes with access to a suite of advanced features and tools that might otherwise be out of reach for smaller publishers. However, a scalable, usage-based pricing model ensures that even publishers from less economically robust regions can leverage enterprise-grade technology without being burdened by unsustainable fees.

Why Ad Tech Vendors Are Embracing the Self-Serve Revolution

The trend that has become evident in the last couple of years is that initiatives like The Trade Desk’s OpenPath challenge SSPs’ traditional value propositions by altering the dynamics between the buy-side and sell-side.

The shift is clear: as supply path optimization wars intensify, SSPs are trying to differentiate and are moving towards a SaaS model, positioned as a necessary change to foster more meaningful, strategic, and economically viable partnerships.

Very simply, with ad tech entering the era of disintermediation, ad tech vendors are following suit.

Earlier this year, Setupad launched a fully automated self-serve platform for Prebid. Yieldbird introduced an all-in-one extension for GAM (essentially a self-serve interface). Hashtag Labs, PubWise, and Assertive Yield, to name a few, are all platforms offering exclusively Prebid-as-a-Service products. Not to mention the industry powerhouses Pubmatic’s OpenWrap and Magnite’s Demand Manager and other SSPs with their non-public self-serve offerings.

The Buy-Side Boom: Why Advertisers Are Going Self-Serve

It’s not much different. There’s a lot of demand from programmatic advertisers for self-service buying right now. Advertisers benefit from easy targeting, access to first-party data, and control over their campaigns. And it’s not a secret that advertisers often find their ads missing the target audience (especially SMEs), particularly with a loss of signal.

DSPs like AdLib and AdRoll rebranded themselves into “self-serve DSPs.” Infillion acquired MediaMath, officially admitting the reason for the purchase was to add self-service capabilities to its core business.

The buy-side self-serve industry is dominated by giants like The Trade Desk and DV360, but, just as on the sell side, the customization depth of these platforms varies. Moving towards the self-serve route isn’t just smart due to a growing interest in self-serve advertising, but also because of the wider trend that seeks to exclude DSPs from the supply chain.

Last year, both Magnite and Pubmatic cut out DSPs by launching ClearLine and Activate, respectively, products designed to give advertisers direct access to CTV and online video inventory.

Differentiating your offering comes with a lot of first-mover advantages. For example, accumulating vast amounts of data sooner than competitors is perhaps one of the most valuable for DSPs.

What’s Holding Back Ad Tech’s Self-Serve Evolution?

Although the trend is obvious, the majority of ad tech players still haven’t advanced their offerings or haven’t made it public.

Why? Building a robust platform requires significant upfront investment in technology and infrastructure. Transitioning existing customers to a self-serve model can be challenging, as it requires changing established workflows. Vendors are also afraid to sacrifice the existing revenue shares that bring great profits.

The readiness of the market to adopt a self-service model can significantly impact its success. And big publishers, to no one’s surprise, are very slow to change their ways.

However, with ad tech being as fragmented as it is now, it leaves few options but to advance and differentiate.

The complexity of the UI of the two behemoths in the self-serve space offered by Pubmatic and Magnite opens a lot of room for smaller ad tech vendors to differentiate and offer a compelling solution with flexible pricing. However, one area where you can’t compromise is technological capabilities.

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